Trajectory planning and yaw rate tracking control for lane changing of intelligent vehicle on curved road

The lateral control for lane changing of intelligent vehicle on curved road in automatic highway systems was studied. Based on trapezoidal acceleration profile, considering the curvature difference between starting lane and target lane, a new virtual trajectory planning method for lane changing on curved road was presented, and the calculating formulas for ideal states of vehicle in the inertial coordinate system during a lane changing maneuver were established. Applying the predetermined trajectory, the reference yaw angle and yaw rate for lane changing were generated. On the assumption that the information on yaw rate of vehicle can be measured with on-board sensors and based on the lateral dynamical model of vehicle, the yaw-rate-tracking control law was designed by applying nonsingular terminal sliding mode technology. Based on Lyapunov function method, the finite-time convergence property of the system was obtained from the phase-plane analysis. Simulation results showed that if the curvature difference between starting lane and target lane was not considered, then at the finishing time of lane changing, it was impossible to avoid the deviation of the virtual trajectory panned from the target lane, which increased with the decrease of curvature radius. With the trajectory planning method and yaw rate-tracking control law proposed in this paper and considering the curvature difference between the starting lane and target lane, the desired virtual trajectory for lane changing without deviation was obtained and the expected tracking performance was also verified by the simulation.